Since the beginning of time, man has pursued power by any means necessary; the Civil War is a great example of this theory in action. The reason conflict started and the reason it became such a two sided battle all points back to one thing, power. The way it should be distributed, what type of people should have it, and who should have the most all stir up conflicts between people with different opinions. In the end, the Civil War started due to a struggle for power, and when it was all said and done, the lines had still not been clearly drawn.
In the time before the Civil War there were struggles for power all around. One of the biggest was the North versus the South constantly trying to compromise political power. They were trying to figure out a way to keep the power in Congress between the slave states and the free states equal. The Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act are two great examples of the long list of compromises the two sides have tried to come to. The compromises continued but to no avail, the subject of who had the final say involving slavery was one that had to be defined clearly, and this could not be compromised. Another struggle was between the Blacks (with few white Northerners on their side) and the Southern slave owners. The Southerners claimed that they should have power over the Blacks because they could take care of them and keep them on the right path. Where as the Blacks thought they should have control over themselves. They thought that they could take care of themselves, and that they were being treated wrongly by the white slave owners. The South also just wanted more power, they didn't want an even distribution between the state governments and the federal government. They believed that the state should have all the power and that's not what the Union wanted for it's governmental system. These are just a couple of the reasons the Civil War began, but the fighting was all just an interruption in the real struggle, the violence and blooRABhed solved nothing.
Reconstruction after the war tried to resolve these issues while trying to create a balance that would work, but both of the sides were very stubborn and would not give up too much. Since the South had turned against the North and seceded, naturally they should have been punished to some degree. The Radical Republicans wanted to punish them severely and treat them like conquered territories, but Andrew Johnson (being from the South himself) wanted to let them off with nothing more than a political slap on the wrist, letting them conduct business as usual. Even after the war, the South continued to perform slavery under a new name, having the Blacks doing the same work and this time just paying them very little for it. They continued to try to come back into the Union with the same amount of political power as they had when they left, and they succeeded to some degree. While they did not have a lot at first, they slowly worked their way back in and got their power back, committing the same crimes as before. They even got power hungry again and tried to rise up with groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. If they couldn't control their State the legal way, they would do it illegally and with more violent and aggressive ways.
The South learned almost nothing from the whole experience, they saw it as the Northerners trying to take away their power and they weren't going to stand for it. They did not have the troops to win the war, but they would fight for their power in anyway possible. America was built on the phrase "land of the free, home of the brave" but they never specified what type of man you had to be to be free. Possessing another man as property brought more power to the individual, and he would do anything to protect it. Power can turn a man against his brother, or in this case, a country against itself, neither of which are good things.
In the time before the Civil War there were struggles for power all around. One of the biggest was the North versus the South constantly trying to compromise political power. They were trying to figure out a way to keep the power in Congress between the slave states and the free states equal. The Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act are two great examples of the long list of compromises the two sides have tried to come to. The compromises continued but to no avail, the subject of who had the final say involving slavery was one that had to be defined clearly, and this could not be compromised. Another struggle was between the Blacks (with few white Northerners on their side) and the Southern slave owners. The Southerners claimed that they should have power over the Blacks because they could take care of them and keep them on the right path. Where as the Blacks thought they should have control over themselves. They thought that they could take care of themselves, and that they were being treated wrongly by the white slave owners. The South also just wanted more power, they didn't want an even distribution between the state governments and the federal government. They believed that the state should have all the power and that's not what the Union wanted for it's governmental system. These are just a couple of the reasons the Civil War began, but the fighting was all just an interruption in the real struggle, the violence and blooRABhed solved nothing.
Reconstruction after the war tried to resolve these issues while trying to create a balance that would work, but both of the sides were very stubborn and would not give up too much. Since the South had turned against the North and seceded, naturally they should have been punished to some degree. The Radical Republicans wanted to punish them severely and treat them like conquered territories, but Andrew Johnson (being from the South himself) wanted to let them off with nothing more than a political slap on the wrist, letting them conduct business as usual. Even after the war, the South continued to perform slavery under a new name, having the Blacks doing the same work and this time just paying them very little for it. They continued to try to come back into the Union with the same amount of political power as they had when they left, and they succeeded to some degree. While they did not have a lot at first, they slowly worked their way back in and got their power back, committing the same crimes as before. They even got power hungry again and tried to rise up with groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. If they couldn't control their State the legal way, they would do it illegally and with more violent and aggressive ways.
The South learned almost nothing from the whole experience, they saw it as the Northerners trying to take away their power and they weren't going to stand for it. They did not have the troops to win the war, but they would fight for their power in anyway possible. America was built on the phrase "land of the free, home of the brave" but they never specified what type of man you had to be to be free. Possessing another man as property brought more power to the individual, and he would do anything to protect it. Power can turn a man against his brother, or in this case, a country against itself, neither of which are good things.